Hasta La Ideas

Just a mere 100mm thick when folded, the Extendable Flatpack Paper Bed is quite incredible for a few reasons. Made entirely from paper, the bed uses an accordion-style folding mechanism to allow the bed to extend and collapse when needed. The paper’s vertical layout gives it incredible strength, allowing it to easily take the weight of two people (up to 300 kilos, or 661 lbs) sleeping or sitting on it (the mattress helps distribute the pressure too). The bed’s foldable nature may give it the advantage of portability, but its foldable mattress allows it to also turn into a sofa and an ottoman stool when you need. Just fold the base and mattress along and you’ve got yourself a simple, sturdy seating device, with or without a backrest!

The bed’s corrugated cardboard construction allows it to be eco-friendly (paper’s quite recyclable, no?) as well as light. Weighing in at just a mere 14.5 kilograms (32 lbs), the Extendable Flatpack Paper Bed is probably the lightest bed (or even sofa) for its category. And it can literally slide behind your cupboard when not in use.

Designer: Pro Idee

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All Unitasker Wednesday posts are jokes — we don’t want you to buy these items, we want you to laugh at their ridiculousness. Enjoy!

The Catch & Go steering wheel smartphone holder holds smartphones from 3.5″ to 5.5″ wide. It quickly and easily attaches to your steering wheel. You can use your GPS and talk on your phone hands free. See the video here.

It is important to have a hands-free device when you are driving your car. Keeping both hands on the steering wheel is the most effective way to control a car. It is also important to keep both eyes looking out the windscreen at the road, traffic, and surroundings. I briefly considered calling the device a multi-tasker because it would allow you to watch a movie on your phone while crashing your car at the same time.

The other issue I have with Catch & Go’s steering wheel smartphone holder is charging the smartphone while it is attached. Often GPS apps can drain the phone battery significantly so the ability to charge the phone while using it would be helpful. You would have to have a longer cable to compensate for turning the steering wheel but would the cable get tangled if there was too much slack? If the steering wheel turned and the cable was too tight would it yank the phone out of the holder and cause further distraction?

The steering wheel smartphone holder just does not seem like a safe option to me. In all fairness, Catch & Go makes a couple of different phone holders that do not attach to the steering wheel. They would be a lot safer as the phone would not be in your direct line of vision nor cause the cord to get tangled in your legs while driving.

Despite all this, I really like the design — but not for driving. It would be handy to have one of these easy to install gadgets for the kitchen. Hanging the phone from a cupboard door handle would keep it off the messy counter.

Would you use it for driving? If you didn’t use it for driving, where would you use it?

Post written by Jacki Hollywood Brown

I once got stabbed in the head with a wooden knife, during a martial arts class. To close the wound, I had to go to the ER to get stitches in my forehead. It was both gruesome and expensive. The doc couldn’t do much but stitch the wound shut, so if there was some DIY way to close the wound, I’d have done that instead and saved myself the bill.

Well, now there is a DIY way to keep wounds shut, and it’s scalable to the length of the wound. ZipStitch is a clever invention that requires no expertise to apply, and operates on the same principles as zip-ties:

The company claims their product is 8x stronger than stitches and leaves less scarring:

And if the length of your cut exceeds the length of the ZipStitch, you can of course just gang them up:

Here’s a closer look at the design:

Used in hospitals, ZipStitch is also available to the general public. You can even get ’em on Amazon.

As every couple that shares a bed knows, there is an imaginary 50-yard-line down the middle of that bed, and both parties can get a good night’s sleep if there are no advances or losses in territory. When one partner crosses that DMZ, unconsciously thrashing about in the throes of a spicy-Thai-food-driven nightmare, they’re literally in for a rude awakening.

Admittedly it’s not the world’s most pressing problem. But Ford’s designers and engineers had a bit of fun with the phenomenon by devising the “Lane-Keeping Bed,” which uses the same lane-keeping sensors that are in their cars to monitor when one sleeper has crossed into another’s “lane.” Then a conveyor-belt-like surface corrects the situation:

Of course, technically speaking the system doesn’t actually separate the partners; following the bed-correction, the one whose space has been intruded upon must still retreat, it’s just that they now have more space to retreat to. But hey, we don’t see GM, Toyota or Honda doing anything about this.

What do laypeople consider “good design?” I’m not talking about the stuff MoMA sells at their store, I’m talking about the little everyday products and experiences we encounter. Here are ten examples that jumped out at me from a subReddit on the topic:

I love this, though it’s no surprise why we don’t see it often. Can you imagine trying to frame and install this  ?

“This door in my hotel bathroom can close off either of 2 doorways.”

The placement makes better sense than at eye level, though this ought have its own illumination.

“The hotel I am staying at has the fire evacuation plans at ground level so you can see them if smoke has filled the hallways.”

Probably fake, but it would be great if this feature actually existed.

“The toaster oven at my parents’ house has a button for ‘a bit more.'”

I have mixed feelings on this one. (It’s a hand sanitizer dispenser on a public bathroom door, if you can’t tell.) Could people smoothly operate this while exiting, or is it meant to be used with the door stationary, thus creating a bottleneck at the exit?

“All public bathrooms need this.”

Admittedly this is no improvement at all, and is probably more onerous to store than the fold-flat sandwich board variety. But I’m tickled by the fact that it’s a banana, so sue me.

“This wet floor sign in a restaurant.”

Mo’ potatoes, mo’ problems.

“This plant holder allows you to collect vegetables without digging out the entire plant.”

So smart. Everything from the low-cost pool noodle to the see-through portion for visibility.

“This car park in France has soft barriers between parking spaces to stop people scratching other cars.”

I’ve always thought showers should have a mechanism like this: One feature to control water pressure, the other to set the exact temperature you like. This one appears to only monitor the temperature, but I still like it better than conventional shower controls.

“Shower thermometer.”

Just smart.

“This hand cream has a grip so you can close it with slippery hands.”

Perfect for vertically-oriented outlets.

“This plug that don’t bother others plugs.”

Do you have any favorite examples of good design/UX along the lines in these photos?